1. Field
Embodiments of the invention relate to the field of digital content transmissions and display. More specifically, one embodiment of the invention relates to a system and method for creation, synchronization and delivery of alternate content for dynamic substitution of unwanted video or audio on a scene-by-scene basis.
2. General Background
Television is used to deliver content, such as entertainment and educational programs, to viewers. A growing number of parents are now watching and listening to content perceived by their children, in an effort to better shield their young children from exposure to objectionable content, namely violence, sexual situations, indecent or suggestive language and the like.
In television programming, for example, the removal/restoration of potentially objectionable content is implemented during content authoring/editing using a nonlinear editing system.
As illustrated in FIG. 1, a conventional nonlinear editing system 100 is used to select desired portions of audio and video sequences (scenes) taken from one or more libraries 110, which contain all of the raw content footage (e.g., video, audio, etc.) under consideration, and then to establish their temporal relationships. The temporal relationships involve the arrangement of adjacent sequences of the same content type.
For instance, as shown in FIG. 2, video sequences 202, 204, 206 and 208, namely uncompressed digital video 200, are arranged in a temporal relationship to each other. Audio sequences 212, 214, 216 and 218, namely audio 210, are similarly arranged with respect to each other. Thereafter, each video sequence 202, 204, 206 and 208 is synchronized with one or more audio sequences which may represent different forms of audio such as dialog tracks 212 and 214, music track 216, sound effects 218, or the like. Normally, the audio is in the form of Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) audio samples. Even though the end product consists of one continuous video sequence with a single synchronized audio track (containing a composition of multiple forms of audio accomplished by a digital mixdown unit 120 of FIG. 1), all digital components 200 and 210 comprising the content remain distinct and separate while in nonlinear editing system 100.
Referring back to FIG. 1, after the final edited version of the content is completed, it is then assembled into a compilation including the selected video and audio sequences. This involves the selected video and audio sequences being compressed, perhaps using MPEG-2 video encoder 130 and AC-3 audio compressor 140 for video and audio respectively, and synchronized with each other to produce a continuous transport stream 150 of a reduced size. This size reduction is what makes the transmission, broadcast and/or storage of digital video content practical, allowing it to fit on inexpensive media like DVDs or to be carried in standard six megahertz (6 MHz) Radio Frequency (RF) spectral channel concurrent with eight or more other A/V services.
After compression and placement into transport stream 150, the video and audio cannot be edited. Transport stream 150 features video running at a constant frame per second rate and compressed audio synchronized with the video. The audio is continuous as well, where silence is represented by specific data values. Conventional nonlinear editing system 100 offers no mechanism to produce any transport streams with alternate content that can be substituted for selected video and audio.
At the destination, with respect to the rendering of video programs, televisions have been implemented with technologies that allow parents to preclude the playback of programs that exceed a selected age-based rating. A black screen is shown for any program that exceeds the selected age-based rating in order to prevent such viewing. This program blocking can be disabled with a parental password.
However, there are a number of major shortcomings of these technologies. For instance, the filtering only occurs at the program level, namely a viewer gets to view the entire program or nothing at all. In other words, there is no selective blocking capability, and clearly no ability to substitute alternate content provided with the transport stream.